Autonomous Air Combat AI for DARPA's Air Combat Evolution Program

Intro

Accelint supports Dynetics under the DARPA Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, an initiative advancing AI-driven autonomy and human-machine collaboration in air combat. The program’s goal is to strengthen operator trust in autonomous systems by enabling unmanned aircraft to execute tactical maneuvers while human pilots maintain mission-level command oversight.

‍Challenge

Modern air combat requires rapid, coordinated action between manned and unmanned platforms in dynamic and uncertain environments. DARPA needed autonomous systems that could demonstrate predictable, explainable, and coordinated behavior while maintaining operator confidence. The ACE program sought to scale beyond individual engagements, enabling multiple aircraft to collaborate autonomously while human operators retained situational awareness and control.

Solution

Accelint contributes to TA3 by focusing on extending AI from individual dogfight tactics to multi-aircraft coordination. 

The effort includes:

• Developing autonomous behaviors for vehicles flying in both offensive and defensive air missions
• Applying cognitive AI architectures for sophisticated, transparent reasoning
• Enabling battle management coordination between autonomous and human-controlled systems
• Ensuring AI transparency to build trust between human operators and autonomous aircraft

‍

Accelint is developing, integrating, and testing autonomous behaviors that extend from local tactical engagement to heterogeneous, multi-aircraft mission execution. The work leverages Accelint's expertise in cognitive architectures, AI, and air mission autonomy to support DARPA's vision of scalable human-machine teaming in combat environments.